Owning It

by Leah Marie Brown

  Pops’s lips twitch.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s not.”

  “Laney.”

  Mom has been so quiet it takes me a few seconds to realize she has spoken.

  “We know you’re a free spirit and that you identify with the bohemian lifestyle, but it’s time you grew up.”

  Hello? Have you even been listening?

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Well.” She raises her mug to her lips and takes a sip. Dramatic pause for effect. “You could start by adding age-appropriate garments to your wardrobe.”

  I look at her sell-out suit—the Ann Taylor slacks, prim sweater set, and leather loafers—and a new wave of tears floods my eyes. Welcome to Squaresville! You’ll be issued a strand of pearls and requisite little black dress. Please leave all originality at the door. Individuality is highly discouraged.

  My resistance to conservative clothes goes back to second-grade picture day. I wanted to wear a pair of pants with bright yellow pompoms hanging along the hem and a T-shirt embroidered with an upside-down daisy and the word Oopsadaisy, but Mom insisted I wear a pinafore dress and Mary Janes. It’s not about nonconformity for rebellion’s sake. I have always believed that your wardrobe is a reflection of your soul. My soul is colorful, quirky, and happy. I wish Mom accepted that.

  “I don’t like that suggestion.” I reach over my shoulder and pull the hood of my cat onesie over my head, low enough to conceal my teary eyes. “What else ya got?”

  “You could stop spending so much time on prepubescent diversions.”

  Ouch. It appears I’ve just been sniped by a card-carrying pacifist in leather loafers. I would like to say I never saw it coming, but this isn’t the first time Mom has hit me with the “prepubescent diversions” speech.

  “Like my music, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Music isn’t a diversion for me, Mom. It’s a serious, lifelong passion.”

  She sighs and uses two fingers to rub circles over her temples. “Strumming a ukulele and singing silly songs to toddlers doesn’t pay the bills, Laney.”

  “Obviously!”

  “And then there’s your art. You spend a small fortune in paints and canvases even though you have only sold a dozen paintings. It is time you stopped entertaining these delusions of being a world-famous artist who makes enough money to survive. If you were talented enough to make it as an artist, you wouldn’t be dressing up in ridiculous costumes and singing ridiculous songs to earn gas money.”

  Her first shot winged me, but this one is a kill shot. My heart aches worse than when Tommy Brubaker dumped me the day before the prom.

  “If I get accepted to the Cadré, I will be working and living in one of the most prestigious galleries in the world.”

  “If. If. You hang a lot on that little word.” She clears her throat. “If you were offered an internship at the gallery, how would you pay for your ticket to France? Your food? We will not fund another trip. Besides, painting is a hobby, not a career.”

  I feel defeated, and I haven’t even been accepted to the Cadré program. Each year, the Cadré Gallery chooses half a dozen artists from around the world to live and work in their awesome space. The cadets, as they are called, must work in the gallery and produce a piece of art for display and sale. It’s, like, the alpha and omega of all art internships.

  I peek around my hoodie and lock gazes with my mom. I am hoping she will see the pain in my eyes and drop the sniper rifle.

  “We just want to see you gainfully employed and capable of supporting yourself.”

  “You’re not the only one.” I try to keep my tone on the right side of respectful, maybe just a notch or two away from belligerent. “Do you think I like living here? Do you think I like sleeping in my childhood room, surrounded by reminders of my gross inadequacy? Little Laney Brooks, the special child of the brilliant Doctor Elisabet Brooks.”

  “That’s not fair! I’ve never made you feel like a ‘special’ kid”—she looks to my father for support, but he merely shrugs—“at least not in the way you mean it.”

  I am mentally making the okay sign with my fingers and mouthing, “Okay, sure.”

  “You know how some parents draw little lines on the door frame to mark their children’s growth?”

  My mom frowns. “Yes?”

  “Well, the lines on our door frame represent all of the ways I haven’t measured up. All of the ways I have disappointed you both. They might be invisible marks, but believe me, I see them. I know they are there.”

  You know that moment after you’ve launched a verbal nuclear missile, when you wish you could turn back time and stop yourself from pushing the button? That satisfying, sickening moment when you realize the fallout will be great. That’s this moment. Right now.

  The clock tick-tick-ticks ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Loud ticks that punctuate the post-nuclear silence. I consider apologizing, but the small, defiant voice inside me says, “Why? Why apologize for the way you really feel?” Truth be told, I have felt like a bona fide, documented failure in my parents’ eyes for years.

  “The thing is,” Pops says, leaning back in his chair so he can see beneath my hoodie, “your mother and I don’t think you are a failure. In fact, we think you are a smart, talented young lady who has failed to live up to your potential. We accept part of the blame.”

  Wait, what? I push the hoodie back.

  “You do?”

  Pops nods. “We have provided you with a comfortable, cozy nest. We paid for your college, helped you fund your volunteer year in Alaska, gave you money to get an apartment, and now we have let you move back home.”

  “And I appreciate all of it. I really do.”

  “I know you do, sweetie,” Pops says, smiling sadly. “But I think you have become accustomed to the nest.”

  My stomach drops to my fuzzy-covered feet.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying,” he pauses, and my mom squeezes his hand, her silent show of solidarity “that it’s time you learned how to fly on your own—completely.”

  What does that even mean?

  “What that means”—Pops reaches across the table with his other hand and grabs my hand—“is that you have three months to find a job, a real job with benefits and insurance, and a new place to live.”

  “You’re throwing me out?”

  “We like to think of it as encouraging you to soar.”

  Chapter 5

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “Let It Be” by The Beatles

  “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield

  “You Can Get It If You Really Want” by Jimmy Cliff

  To: Laney Brooks

  From: Stéphanie Moreau

  Subj: RE: Karma Hates Me

  Karma is a hair-flipping, designer-bag-carrying, football-player-dating Mean Girl. She waits until you’re walking through the cafeteria with a stack of books and a tray with rubbery chicken nuggets and then she trips you. She can act all innocent, but we know she is a spiteful bitch. The good news? You aren’t the first person she’s bullied. She will get tired of you and move on.

  In the meantime, get out of that onesie. You can’t conquer the world dressed in a polyester cat suit. Well, you could, but you would look classier wearing an Armani suit and Louboutin’s pink crystal python pumps (coveting).

  N’abandonne pas, ma puce. I might not be as good at reading auras as you, but I am sensing yours is greenish. Didn’t you tell me green signified growth and change? I think the Cadré Gallery will choose you to be one of their cadets. Think about it! In a few months, you will be living and studying art in Paris! (I would never end two sentences in a row with exclamation points, but Vivia is reading over my shoulder, and she told me to add them because they are “energetic and uplifting.”)

  I’m not going to lie. The downer convo with my parents has left me bummed. Crawl back into bed, hug Hoppy (my fave stuffed ani
mal from when I was a kid), and pull the covers over my head bummed. Ugly cry bummed. Both of which I did after eating a cold pancake and helping Mom with the dishes. That’s where I am now, under the covers, clutching Hoppy.

  I stick my hand out from under the covers, feel around for my nightstand, grab my iPhone, and read Fanny’s e-mail again, pausing when I get to the part about never giving up.

  N’abandonne pas.

  That’s easy for her to say. Karma is her BFF now. After leaving Alaska, Fanny went to Scotland to track down the man she loved. Now they’re engaged, and Fanny has a successful boutique in the Highlands. She also has a ginormous trust fund.

  I sound jelly, don’t I? I’m not jealous of Calder, her hot lumbersexual fiancé, or her Trump-sized trust fund. Okay, it would be nice to have a hot boyfriend, but money has never fueled my mojo. If I am jealous of anything Fanny has, it’s her focus. She has more focus than the Hubble Telescope. She knew what she wanted, and she made it happen.

  I know what I want but can’t seem to make it happen. I am focus challenged. I am perpetually distracted. Did you ever see the movie Up? I am like Kevin, the dog, who would be focused on his ball and then suddenly . . . squirrel!

  My life is filled with squirrels. I can’t seem to keep my eye on the ball long enough to get it because . . . squirrel.

  “Dude!”

  One minute I am in the fetal position under my blankets thinking about squirrels, and the next I am bouncing three feet in the air as my best friend jumps on my bed like a trampoline.

  “Get up! Get up!”

  He jumps a few more times before vaulting himself off my bed. When I finally stop bouncing, I kick the covers off, sit up, and look at Theo. He’s leaning casually against my dresser, his dark brown hair flopping over his eyes, a grin stretching from ear to ear.

  “You’re such a freak.”

  “Guilty”—he reaches over his shoulder and grabs a green paper sack off my dresser—“but I come bearing gifts.”

  He walks over to my bed carrying the paper bag as if it were an offering to a queen, his head bowed, hands flat.

  “You brought me FroYo?”

  “Blackberry with chocolate shavings.”

  My eyes fill with tears. Theo Wilde has been my best friend since kindergarten. He’s the yin to my yang. We both love music, art, vintage things, ’80s movies, and living life outside the coloring book lines. The only thing we disagree on is whether Game of Thrones, the television show, is as good as A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series it’s based upon. Theo loves the show (probably because of the gratuitous sex), while I prefer the books. I don’t like the show because it totally lost the plot in the fifth season, but watching it with Theo has become our Sunday night thing.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking the bag and putting it on my nightstand. “But I’m too bummed to eat.”

  “Bullshite,” he says, snatching the bag. “You’re never too bummed to eat FroYo.”

  He pulls the carton out of the bag, removes the lid, and hands it to me, along with a spoon.

  “Eat.” He flops on my bed on his back, grabs Hoppy, and tosses him in the air like a football. “You need sustenance. You’re starting to look like Cersei Lannister when she walked from Great Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep.”

  I snort. Cersei Lannister is a character in A Song of Ice and Fire. On the show, she was forced to atone for her sins by walking naked through the streets as hecklers hurled food and insults at her. It was gratuitously sexual and sickening to watch. Theo thought it was gnarly.

  “I feel as if I have walked in Cersei’s footsteps.”

  “It can’t be that bad.” He catches Hoppy by a floppy ear and tosses him in the air again. “Admittedly, crashing your car and getting tossed from your pad aren’t the makings of a stellar week, but your ’rents are being cool and letting you stay with them.”

  I snort again. Between bites of FroYo, I tell Theo about the conversation with my parents.

  “Duuuude.” He stops tossing Hoppy and rolls on his side so he can look at me. “She didn’t really tell you to give up painting, did she?”

  I nod my head because I can’t talk. There’s a huge lump in my throat, and it isn’t one of those phlegmy lumps you get after eating FroYo.

  “Shame. Shame,” he says, mimicking the hecklers in the Game of Thrones scene. “Shame. Shame.”

  “Right?”

  “I’m sorry, Lane.”

  He smiles softly, one of his puppy-dog-eyes and dimpled-cheeks smiles that makes most girls melt like a handful of Hershey kisses left in a gym shorts pocket (been there, done that. Third grade. It earned me the nickname Dookie Brooks). The smolder doesn’t work on me though, because, well, Theo is like a brother.

  “Thanks.”

  “She’s wrong, you know?”

  I blink back the tears. “She is?”

  “More wrong than Donald Trump. More wrong than complaining about the sex scenes on Game of Thrones. Like, totes wrong.”

  I laugh.

  “I’ve never heard you say totes before.”

  “You see what I do for you?”

  “You’re the best.”

  “I am.” He rolls off my bed and leaps to his feet. “You know what else I did for you?”

  I grab my glasses off my nightstand and put them on.

  “What?”

  He walks over to the dresser, lifts a stack of envelopes and a withered house plant in a hand-painted pot and brings them to me, tossing the envelopes in a stack on the bed and depositing the plant on my nightstand.

  “I went to your apartment, moved your boxes into the ’rents’ garage, and grabbed your mail before your shady landlord sold everything at the flea market.” He flops on the bed again, grabs the FroYo container from my hand, and spoons a frozen lump of blackberries and chocolate into his mouth. “And I rescued Fern.”

  I look at the withered house plant in the pot Theo helped me paint and smile. Fern, with her brittle leaves and droopy stalk, is a metaphor for my dried-up, sad life.

  “I wish all it took was a little fertilizer and some water to revive my withered life.”

  “Your life isn’t that tragic.”

  “Isn’t it?” I scoff. “I have three months to find a well-paying, steady, non-suit job that won’t zap my brain from boredom or require me to dance naked on tables.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with nudity.”

  “Whatev.”

  “You could always move to Burlington, Vermont, with me.”

  “Wait. What?” I shake my head back and forth like a cartoon character. “Why are you moving to Vermont?”

  “Remember that old dude I told you I met at the Recycled Arts Festival in Portland? The one who gave me his business card and told me to call him if I wanted to take Wilde Rides to the next level?”

  Wilde Rides is the name of Theo’s company. He makes bikes from recycled materials.

  “The one wearing the Doors T-shirt and Birkenstocks?”

  Theo nods his head, and his floppy mop top hangs in front of his eyes. Theo is the lead singer in our band. Whenever we play a gig, women literally throw themselves at him. It’s because he has a crazy soulful voice and this whole Ashton Kutcher thing going. He’s tall, model-handsome, but with a laid-back, I’m just here to chill ’tude. His hair matches his ’tude.

  “I called him a few weeks ago.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugs. “Didn’t think it would amount to anything.”

  Theo’s bikes are original pieces of art and totally old-school.

  “Well? What did he say?”

  “It turns out he was one of the original investors in Ben and Jerry’s.”

  “I. Can’t. Even.” I push my glasses back up on my nose. “Ben and Jerry’s has been around since, like, the Jurassic period. He must be a stegosaurus.”

  “A stegosaurus with loads of cash.”

  “And you’re sure he’s not sus?”

  “Naw,” Theo sh
akes his head again “nothing shady going on. He’s the legit deal.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wants to invest in Wilde Rides. He’s giving me the capital to start manufacturing on a crazy-huge scale in exchange for a twenty-five percent stake in the company.”

  “That’s Van Gogh insane!”

  “Fall in love with your cousin and cut off your ear crazy.”

  We laugh.

  But I am conflicted. Theo is a savage artisan with mad skills, and I am happy he is a nanosecond away from realizing his dream, but I’m also a little frightened that if he goes off to Vermont and becomes a focused, successful bike mogul, he won’t have time for me. No more midnight FroYo runs. No more bingeing on John Huston movies. No more arguing about whether the writers of Game of Thrones have compromised the storyline in order to present an alternate, and more salacious, view of gender, power, and sexuality.

  “Laney-Bo-Baney?” He nudges me with his knee. “Stop dwelling in the negative space.”

  “I’m not.”

  Yes, I am.

  “Yes, you are.”

  Theo can’t read auras. If he could, he would know that the dark, dense colors I am emanating indicate serious self-pity and depression. He can read me, though.

  “Are you afraid I will forget you after I become a billionaire? That I’ll be too busy posing between Oprah and the queen on the cover of Forbes?”

  I blink away the tears and shake my head.

  He rolls off my bed, grabs my ukulele from its stand, and strums the strings while singing about wanting to be a billionaire “so fucking bad” Bruno Mars–style. When he’s finished, he tosses my ukulele on the bed and imitates Travie McCoy’s in-yer-face swagger.

  I grabby Hoppy and toss him at Theo, and we both laugh.

  He sits back down on my bed, and I hug my knees to my chest.

  “But why Vermont?”

  Theo shrugs. “Something about placement for strategic distribution and access to raw materials.”